As Emma draws closer to La Huchette, she is reminded of the
"sensations of her first love." The melting snow is described as she
makes her way to Rodolphe's room. He is surprised at her sudden
appearance. Emma reproaches Rodolphe for deserting her and
urges him to renew their relationship. Rodolphe is taken in with
Emma's show of 'undying' love and attempts to find out the cause
of her sorrow. Her answer leaves him stunned, for she has
explained that she is urgently in need of a large sum of money to
clear up a debt. Rodolphe calmly states his inability to help her.
Angered and humiliated, Emma gives Rodolphe a piece of her
mind before leaving. She runs from La Huchette in a dazed state.

Night is falling as Emma becomes fully conscious of "the deep
hopelessness of her plight." She hurries to the chemist's shop,
where she persuades Justin to lead her to the storeroom. All the
while, the young boy has a "presentiment of something terrible."
Once in the storeroom, Emma goes directly to a blue jar of arsenic
and uncorks it. She plunges her hand into the jar and crams the
white powder into her mouth. Justin tries to stop her. She calmly
tells him that his master will be blamed for her act. Then she walks
off.

At home, she writes a letter, seals it, and solemnly tells Charles to
read it the next day. She stretches herself on the bed, expecting to
die in her sleep. Instead, she soon displays violent symptoms of
illness. Charles notices a white sediment at the base of the basin in
which she has just vomited. When her body is wracked with
convulsions, he becomes desperate. He tears open her letter and
learns that she has poisoned herself. Homais is called. He, in turn,
sends for Monsieur Canivet and Dr Lariviere, but their presence
makes no difference. Emma has clearly taken a turn for the worse,
and no treatment is possible. Bournisien is summoned and
administers the last sacrament to Emma. A sudden joy is glimpsed
in her eyes and her face grows serene. She is clearly breathing her
last breath when a sudden commotion disturbs the solemn moment.
The blind beggar's hoarse voice is heard singing his usual song:

'When the sun shines warm above,
It turns a maiden's thoughts to love.
All across the furrows brown
See Nanette go bending down,
Gathering up with careful hand
The golden harvest from the land.
The wind it blew so hard one day,
Her little petticoat flew away.'

These words have a dramatic effect on Emma. She sits up like a "galvanized
corpse" and laughs "a ghastly, frantic, desperate laugh"
before another convulsion ends her life.

Notes

As Emma heads towards La Huchette, she is clearly trying her last resource.
She knows the kind of affect she has on Rodolphe and hopes she can charm
him into giving her the money needed to pay off her debt. Rodolphe's passion
is aroused on seeing her, as reflected in the melting snow that hints
of his awakening emotions. He is shocked, however, at her request for
money and states his inability to help her. Emma is horrified as she listens
to his excuses. Realizing that she has offered herself to him for nothing,
she is furious and berates Rodolphe for accepting the gifts she had given
him. She tells him of how his parting letter had torn her heart. In truth,
his original betrayal had triggered her long illness and the start of
her self-destruction.

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Emma is in agony, realizing that she is totally unable to raise the
money and that Rodolphe has never loved her. Flaubert wonderfully captures
her emotions: "Only in her love did she suffer; through the thought
of that she felt her soul escape from her as a wounded man in his last
agony feels life flow out through his bleeding gashes." The image
of death is etched in these lines, foreshadowing Emma's tortuous end.
In desperation, Emma coerces Justin to let her into Homais' storeroom.
She knows where the arsenic is stored and quickly eats a handful of the
white powder. It is ironic that Justin, who loves Emma patiently through
all her indiscretions, is the one who enables her to commit suicide, becoming
the agent of her death. Because of his devotion to her, he cannot deny
Emma; ironically, Emma feels nothing for Justin. Throughout the book,
she has yearned for absolute love but fails to recognize it in Justin.

Emma remains a romantic until the very end. The manner in which she
expects death to embrace her contrasts strongly with the way in which
she actually dies. She imagines herself dying 'peacefully' in her sleep,
but what really happens is ugly and grim as she grows violently ill. The
only peaceful thing she experiences is taking the last sacrament from
the priest. Her final kissing of the cross is passionate and reflective
of her life: "Reaching forward like one in thirst, she glued her
lips to the body of the Man-God and laid upon it with all her failing
strength the most mighty kiss of love she had ever given." For Emma,
love, even spiritual devotion, can only be expressed as earthly and sensual.
As she clings to her faith in the end, the reader is reminded of the two
previous religious phases of her life -- during her adolescence and after
her recovery from Rodolphe's betrayal. It is sad to realize that at two
key points in her life, she has sought spiritual love and deserted it
for sensual passion. Ironically, the naïve and faithful Charles has
stood by her throughout her indiscretions and now blindly hopes for her
recovery.

In the throes of a mighty convulsion as she nears her end, Emma hears
the song of the blind beggar. The mischievous irony of the words being
sung is not lost on Emma. She has apparently heard the tune innumerable
times on her way to and from Rouen; now it has a terrifying affect on
her. The hideous image of the beggar reminds her of "eternal darkness"
as she dies and symbolizes the ugliness of Emma's life.